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Mass Effect Mass Effect Series Retrospective by Shamus Young

Phobos

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Bah, I just quitted MEA. Put in around 20h, Eos viability is 80%, Voeld 100% and quit at Kadara. Granted I didn't even do one of the companion missions which are supposed to be good but I can't stomach to play this game anymore. So here are my impressions so far:
  • Every NPC looks like a goblin which is a pretty respectable achievement, considering this game is on the Frostbyte engine and DA:I NPC's don't even look that bad. Animantions are even worse in every regard. MEA NPC's look like they have super dry skin from the alien planet climate and DA:I NPC's look like they got dunked into a fish oil barrel head first.
  • Companions are all boring, cringy or just okay. No true bro like Garrus or Wrex.
Peebee is the worst offender honestly, she is nothing like a Asari is supposed to be and all around just incredibly annoying to interact with. Doesn't help they uglfied ALL the Asari models in Andromeda.
Jaal is just a budget Javik. He is okay I guess.
Drack is the only good one, a proper boomer Krogan *sips Kett Blood*
Cora cannot shut the fuck up about her being a Asari Huntress, also still salty about you being the Pathfinder instead of her. Annoying.
Liam is whatever, never interacted with him after the tutorial stuff. Would probably take him into my Squad if Jaal or Drack wouldn't exist.
Vetra has nothing interesting going on, I don't care about her boring sob story about her family.
Honestly this cast reeks of SJW shite only some sort of Switch loving Soygoy could like. EA could earn millions with a Switch port heheheh.
  • Combat mechanics are actually fun with mouse and keyboard, something I can't say about the original trilogy. Multiplayer might have some potential but I couldn't test it because its dead.
Too bad the combat encounters are poor, on normal difficulty the game is a cakewalk and on hardcore you die in a picosecond. It gets better once you invest skillpoints into the right abilities but then the enemies turn into massive dmg sponges. Some good number tweaking is needed there to fix this. Also only three active abilities with a cooldown on profile switching, goddamn gamepad faggotry. :argh:
  • The Nomad is fun to handle, props to the Criterion dudes.
  • Dialog is shite and you cannot roleplay as an asshole like in the original trilogy. The answers range from I agree with you very much to I agree with you. Boring.
  • Enviroments are from what I have seen rather boring/cookie cutter but still good to look at because of the Frostbyte engine. I even liked Voeld which is a rather boring Ice Planet, still 100% it cause comfy.
My Origin Access sub is still active until end of January so I might come back to this game and even finish but for now I am fed up.
 
Last edited:

Bumvelcrow

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I was planning on getting it eventually when it was reduced to a silly price because I assumed that even if it was as bad as the reviews suggested I'd still get a couple of hours of enjoyment out of it before I ragequit, but this retrospective and the subsequent comments have convinced me it'll just be ME2 with the frustration levels turned up to eleven.
 

Freddie

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Andromeda Part 11: The Vault in Our Stars

[..]

These vaults are frustrating because I find the spaces to be visually interesting. These places are screaming that they’re part of a grand mystery, but the game won’t let you enjoy a single moment of uncertainty or wonder.

How I’d have done it:

My first instinct is “do a different plot”, but that sort of goes against the spirit of these suggestions. So I’ll constrain my advice to the scenes at hand. I understand we’re no longer doing details-first sci-fi. Fine. That’s disappointing to me, but we have to judge the game we got, not the game we wanted.


This is such an easy problem to solve! All you need to do is cut most of SAM’s dialog. The player already knows they’re here to fix the planet with space magic. Just let them explore the place on their own, at their own pace. It’s not like players are going to be baffled by this linear dungeon of combat and Sesame Street level puzzles. SAM’s narration is like watching 2001: A Space Odyssey with a guy who keeps talking over the movie and telling you everything that’s about to happen, leaving you with nothing to do but wait for events to play out.

Laying aside the damage this narration does to the pacing, it also ruins the mood. While I can accept that there’s no science behind the vaults and they run entirely on inexplicable space-magic, that’s no excuse to make them so accommodating for our team. Instead of having everyone constantly making correct guesses about the technology, have them make incorrect (yet plausible for the genre and possibly humorous) guesses about what they are and how they work.

There’s already some dialog in here where characters will blurt out a comment about how cool this stuff looks. I appreciate having my teammates react to what’s going on, but it would be even better if these barks showed that your team really has no idea what they’re doing.

Liam: (As the player is exploring a tower on the surface.) Maybe these machines are working fine. Like, maybe the aliens that built this place LIKE the radiation. Maybe it’s that they eat or whatever.

Cora: (After defeating a batch of robots.) Maybe that’s what happened to the people that built this vault. Maybe they lost control and were killed by their own defense robots.

Liam: (Upon reaching the plant room.) Woah, check it out guys. More plants! Way down here where there’s no sunshine. Maybe the robots just really like having a garden and they don’t want us trampling it.

Vetra: (Upon reaching the lower levels.) Maybe this place is supposed to be a bunker. Maybe there was some sort of cataclysm on the surface and the builders took shelter here?

Liam: (If the player lingers in one room for too long.) Maybe the builders are still here, but they’re so tiny we can’t see them? But then why would they build their consoles this big? Nevermind.

Liam: (Upon reaching the final room.) What if, like, these PLANTS are the ones that built this place? Maybe they just move real slow or something. What do you think? Guys?

Maybe they reach the first tower, and they assume it will clean the air when they turn it on. But then it doesn’t, and they realize they need two more towers[4]. Have them assume a console will cut power to a forcefield, but then it does something else entirely and takes them in an unexpected direction. They reach the second gravity shaft and assume it’s going to take them down again, but instead it lifts them up. They assume a console will activate the obviously posed killer robots, but then it just turns on the lights. They laugh nervously, start doing a puzzle, and halfway through the robots wake up.

All of this would help sell the idea that these places are crazy alien tech, and not a murder dungeon with a big glowing “ON” button at the end. These vaults look really cool and they might make for a tense scene if SAM’s omniscience wasn’t constantly obliterating all sense of mystery.
It sure looks like BW really likes to shoot themself in the foot, in many ways but exploration is definitely one aspect. What's the point of exploration without discovery?

Somehow I think there might be other factors here than than avoiding challenge curve. Perhaps need to make everything cinematic in action film sense also plays a role in here. ME3 got deserved critique from it's cutscenes where cinematic priorities took over players choices and abilities and even made narrative really silly at times. Underlying issue here might be that they learned to mask that stuff a bit better, but in other hand, now it also crept into exploration. 'Player might waste precious seconds here trying to figure this out. We can't have that!' So they use the SAM to explain everything.

It's interesting though how later Shamus later points out that there are things like red flashing lights in alien environments which also break the immersion, they still needed to add even they could'v just used SAM making analysis to warn player, audio or visual cue to player could have been something else entirely. Or maybe it's actually both? Shamus doesn't go further if that actually happens. There is this Earth ambulance light flashing and at the same time SAM explains to player: 'Oh noes! That flashing red light indicates that installation security features are getting online, you need to get out of here (starts mimicking an ambulance siren).' For whatever this mess is, developers appear to be so fucking inept that I wouldn't put it past them.

But I do wonder how so big misjudgements regarding player agency happened? Exploration is quite telling, driving on deserts that are the same as Earth deserts, and whenever there is something worthwhile found during exploration, taking discovery away from player. It's even more interesting if I think of what Shamus (and Codexers) has wrote about dialogue with NPC's. Player doesn't have any meaningful ways to even disagree.

So we have these worlds, all these characters but it all amounts to nothing because creators aren't interested in what and how player want to experience the game, but keep pushing the pipeline how they want players experience this game. It's less obvious than forced to lose to Kai Leng because of cut scene victory, or narrow corridors of ME2 but it's still there perhaps stronger than ever. They learned nothing, understood nothing what really made people interested about franchise in ME1.

Discussion about what is an RPG will probably go on in the Codex as long forums exists, but even it's possible to make technically an RPG from the mindset BW appeared to have here, it will be shit. I really don't see how this sort of thinking would work with sandbox/openworld game either. Adventure game would need good dialogue and again something to drive the player (discoveries). I can think this mind set could work, or be even beneficial, in creating a third person popamole shooter.
 

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Meet the villains:

Andromeda Part 12: The Bad Guise

mea_splash.jpg

Once the Eos colony is founded, we’re off to the next planet. Along the way we run into the Kett flagship. Figuratively, but also nearly literally. We drop out of warp just a few meters short of them.

Imagine two big game hunters roaming around a vast wilderness, completely unaware of one another. Each of them sees a target, and each of them aims their weapon and fires it. By accident, their bullets collide in mid-air. That sounds unlikely, doesn’t it? And yet that’s orders of magnitude more likely than two interstellar spaceships ending up a hundred meters apart by random chance.

If this is a chance encounter, then that’s ridiculous. But if this isn’t – if the Kett somehow saw where we were going and headed us off – then why don’t they ever pull this trick again?


mea_archon1.jpg

Why is there an obvious derpy frowny face on the front of the ship?


Moreover, the geography of this scene makes no sense. The tempest drops out of warp and winds up nose-to nose with the Kett flagship. But the space behind them is filled with the scourge, which means they must have passed through the scourge to get here. And what is the Archon doing hanging out in the middle of the scourge cloud like this?

Yes, I get we’re no longer doing details-first sci-fi and we’re not supposed to think about the science of moving around in space. Fine. But even in a drama-based universe like Star Wars we still need rules to allow the audience to understand what’s possible. When the Empire puts a tracking device on the Millennium Falcon, we understand this means the bad guys will be able to follow the good guys back to their base. The writer doesn’t just have the bad guys show up without explanation, because in a good story C happens because of B, which happened because of A. It’s hard to create drama in a universe without some level of causality.

Here in Andromeda we have the bad guys randomly bump into the good guys. Was the Archon really sitting in this scourge cloud just above the Angaran homeworld? Did he know the heroes would pass through here? The encounter is presented as if it’s a trap. It nearly works. The good guys barely escape. And yet the bad guys never try this trick again.

What are the rule here? Was this an ambush? Could they try it again? Why don’t they?

Whatever. The important thing is that this is where we meet the bad guy, which means this is where the game falls apart and the Andromeda setting is thoroughly ruined.

Star Bore


mea_archon2.jpg

Where did this screen come from? There's nothing like this on the bridge. This isn't the front window / screen, because that's shorter and more extremely concave. Where is Ryder's control panel? Shouldn't it be in front of this screen? It feels like we teleported to an unlit pocket dimension for this scene.


You can explain a lot of the problems with this game in terms of development problems. There are some ideas that could have been made to work with more time for polish. There are some bits of the game where you can see different writers were not on the same page, and maybe if the schedule wasn’t so tight their work could have been brought into harmony.

During Mass Effect 2 / Mass Effect 3, there was always the excuse that maybe the writer is fine, they’re just wrong for this style of story. If they were allowed to make their own story and weren’t saddled with completing someone else’s work, then maybe their writing could really shine.

But there is no excuse for the state of our main villain here in Andromeda. I don’t care what genre of fiction this game is supposed to be, this guy is a vortex of terrible ideas. He’s not just bad, he’s wrong. Again, I don’t know if this is a new writer or if this is a returning Mass Effect 3 alumni, and it doesn’t matter. I’m criticizing the art and not the person.

The Archon


mea_archon3.jpg

Remember when Mass Effect 1 let you hang up on the council?


This is one of the worst villains I’ve ever seen in a science-fiction story. Sure, guys like Kai Leng, Harbinger, and the Illusive Man might have been more annoying overall, but a lot of their problems were that they were wrong for the world. TIM would be a really cool character in the context of some sort of thriller, and Martin Sheen’s performance was excellent. Kai Leng would have been fine if he was part of a kid’s cartoon. Harbinger would have worked out okay in a campy universe like Last Starfighter or Fifth Element. But the Archon is just irredeemably awful. Everything about him is terrible. His dialog is terrible. The dialog delivery is terrible. The character concept is terrible. The character’s visual design is terrible.

The Archon’s dialog sounds just like Harbinger. He’s got the same overblown way of speaking, and just like Harbinger he’s a complete loser. This guy will belt out things like, “YOU SHALL NEVER DEFEAT MY ELITE GUARDS!” as you slaughter your way through his elite guards.

You might argue that this is supposed to be empowering, that we’re supposed to enjoy proving this guy wrong again and again. But it’s only enjoyable to overcome someone if they come off as cunning or imposing. The Archon is a loser from the moment you meet him, and his only win against you is due to writer-imposed stupidity on the part of the hero.

And then there’s the visual design. Just look at this guy:



mea_intro20.jpg

Short. Dumpy. Tiny eyes. Goofy headpiece. Awkward gait. Small chin. This is the opposite of everything the designer needs to be doing.


He’s got the face of a sheep and a toilet seat on the top of his head. He looks hilarious. The artist even made his eyes tiny and the lids tilt outward, which makes him look sort of stupid and meek. Is he shorter than his minions? And does he have a dumpy beer gut?

This goof is supposed to the the pinnacle of genetic manipulation?

Which, fine. In a hard sci-fi story it would be valid to mess around with the idea that, “The things humans use as emotional cues aren’t universal”. Except, this is such a ridiculously over-the-top character we can’t possibly give the writer that kind of credit. The story takes this guy so deadly seriously, and yet his visual design runs directly opposite to that. He’s ugly, yet not ugly enough to be disturbing or interesting. He’s all spiky in a way that’s supposed to make him look evil, but then his face and pull-tab haircut work against that.

Even if we ignore the visual design, he’s a complete failure because he brings nothing to the table in terms of themes or ideas. He doesn’t oppose Ryder on a philosophical level. He has nothing interesting to say about his species of brainwashed drones. He doesn’t have any clever plans or an interesting backstory. Or any backstory.

This isn’t an unreasonable thing to ask for! In fact, if you’re abandoning nerdy, fussy, details-first sci-fi in favor of action schlock[1] then it’s even more critical that you get the villain right. There’s a saying in fiction, “A hero is only as good as their villain.” There’s a reason audiences embraced Loki and Heath Ledger’s Joker but rejected Steppenwolf (Justice League) Malekith (Thor: The Dark World) and it doesn’t have anything to do with how physically formidable or powerful they are. In fact, the Joker was scary as hell and he was just a regular[2] guy in clown makeup.



mea_archon4.jpg

SAM gets the power back on, breaks the ship free of the Archon's tractor beam or whatever, and charts a course through the scourge. This saves us from needing our heroes to do anything heroic.


Yes, there is room in fiction for simple, straightforward villains. Hela (Thor Ragnarok) and Ronin the Accuser (Guardians of the Galaxy) were both cartoonishly evil. But Hela was fun and witty and seemed to be having a good time. Her character had a nice emotional range that went from playful to vicious to amused to seething. She was fun to watch. Plus, there was all this stuff under the surface about Asgard’s history of brutal conquest and their dysfunctional royal family. Ronin was a one-note bad guy, but his scenes were few, short, and Star Lord even mocked his super-serious attitude.

For contrast, here in Andromeda the Archon has nothing going for him. He’s not having fun. He’s not fun to watch. He has nothing thematic to say. He never says anything incisive or clever. He’s a one-note bore with a lot of dialog. He has no personal rivalry with Ryder except that both of you want the same magic gizmo. Worst of all, the dialog wheel forces you to take this guy seriously. Archon spends a lot of time bellowing at us over the PA system about how unworthy we are and how he’s going to “decimate” us. I wouldn’t mind so much if I could mock him and brush him off with a joke like Star Lord would, but our character sinks to his level by taking the exchange seriously.

(And speaking of “decimate”: The writer uses the word decimate when they mean “obliterate”. Yes, the usage of the word is shifting, but it’s not there yet. It’s like having the villain misuse “literally” to mean “figuratively”. Maybe in a generation it won’t stick out so much, but right now that usage sounds wrong to a large portion of the audience. When multiple characters from multiple species all misuse the same term, you can suddenly hear the voice of the author leaking through the characters. Sure, the audience probably gets what you’re trying to say, but it’s going to sound odd and distracting in a science fiction setting. I want to point out that multiple characters correct our protagonist on her usage of who / whom, so this wrong use of decimate sticks out even more.)

Intensifying the awfulness is just how much dialog he gets and how little of it is needed. He’s constantly promising to defeat you. He never says anything surprising, interesting, or informative. It’s just a retread of threats he’s made a dozen times before.

There’s a lot wrong with Andromeda, but nearly all of it could have been dismissed or mitigated with the right villain. The Archon is so dull, so childish, so lacking in imagination and ambition that he dooms the entire experience. It’s impossible to care about a world in which this guy is supposed to be a serious threat.

How I’d have done it:



mea_sarris.jpg

Galaxy Quest was a comedy movie, but Sarris was still about a hundred times more imposing and impressive than the Archon.


The low-effort way to fix this is just to dial his performance down, remove all of his extraneous dialog, and only have him talk when he has something useful to say.

This isn’t a hard character to design[3] and I can’t imagine how things went so wrong. Just redesign his model to be more imposing and less comical. If he’s going to be a screaming tyrant monster, at least he should LOOK like a screaming tyrant monster. Scowling eyes. Big teeth. Powerful jaw. And get rid of the toilet seat on top of his head.

If I wanted to actually fix him in a way that would make him interesting instead of merely inoffensive, then I’d be a little more ambitious. Let’s try a different design, and at the same time add some basic themes to the game. Let’s also address the weird problem where we crossed dark space to find a bunch of guys at the exact same tech level we are.



mea_lexi1.jpg

Dr. Lexi is probably the only Asari in the game that feels like an Asari. She's a fine character, although the story never does anything with her. She's not even used for exposition.


First, let’s change the Kett:

In my version, the Kett are way behind us in terms of materials and weapons technology, but way ahead when it comes to gene manipulation. Essentially, their genetics ARE their technology.

We’d re-purpose Lexi (the ship’s doctor) to give us exposition about their physical properties. There’s already a scene in the game where she looks at a Kett corpse. We just need to make her studies an ongoing series of expositional conversations rather than a one-off chat that tells us nothing. She would reveal a bunch of facts like:
  • The Kett are a caste-based society, and each caste has unique DNA. We only have this front-line fighter to study, and we don’t have good samples of the other kinds of Kett. These grunts run around naked, but they’re effectively badasses because of their physical characteristics.
  • We can theorize that these other Kett (the Anointed, Cardinals, etc) are from some other species that the Kett have absorbed.
  • The Kett are amphibious, they can survive for several minutes in a vacuum[4], and they can hold their breath for up to an hour.
  • They can eat nearly anything, even their own dead.
  • The Kett don’t age, and could theoretically (as far as Lexi can tell) live forever. They also have no reproductive system[4] and only reproduce via their gene-splicing / rewrite thing.
  • Their carapace is as tough as alliance Armor. It’s also conductive, carrying electric shock away from their vital organs. It can also mitigate ionizing radiation.
  • They have almost as many redundant organs as the Krogan, and can regrow limbs.
  • They can theoretically survive at any temperatures above the boiling point of oxygen (-196 °C / -320 °F) and below the boiling point of water.
  • If trapped without food, a Kett can enter a hibernative state for up to six months.
  • Their blood is just alkaline enough to kill all known pathogens. They’re effectively immune to all sickness and disease[5].
  • The reward centers of their brains are keyed to their social hierarchy. Effectively, they get pleasure from obeying orders. If a Kett was deprived of leadership, it would do everything it could to find a leader of the proper caste. If it was isolated for long enough, it might become depressed and die.
If the player asks why the Kett guns are still dangerous to us if they’re so far behind, someone can explain that their guns are unwieldy and heavy, and the ammunition is bulky. They’re compensating for their primitive firearm technology by carrying really heavy-hitting guns, which they can handle thanks to their advanced strength and reflexes.

I won’t say this fixes the Kett or anything, but it does make them less of a bore. Note that we’re not jamming this stuff down the player’s throat. If they don’t care about Kett society or physiology, they can just skip talking to the doctor. We’re not adding a lot of dialog to the game, so this change should be fairly cheap.

Religion


mea_cardinal1.jpg

This is the Cardinal. We'll meet her later in the story. Her character design isn't great, but it's WAY better than the Archon's. Heck, even the MOOKS look cooler than the Archon. Why was the worst design given to the central villain?


In the game, enemies are given these quasi-religious names: Chosen, Anointed, Disciple, the Cardinal. The transformation is called “exaltation”. The installation where they transform people into Kett is called a “holy place”. This is a fine start for giving them a bit of culture, but it’s not enough to make them interesting on its own. The Kett footsoldiers are portrayed as brainwashed drones. They don’t seem to have any emotional investment in the things they’re doing and we don’t see any indications of passion or creativity in their bases. They live in generic bio-industrial complexes. No clothes, no paintings, no music, no self-expression.

You could argue that the religion is a means of control, but they seem to be entranced or brainwashed before they’re transformed, so it’s not clear why the leadership would need to bother with the religious stuff.

Shamus, you can’t be so dense that you expect the writer to show the bad guys singing and dancing. This isn’t a Disney movie you idiot!

Sure, sure. I’m not saying the writer should do that. I’m just saying that I don’t get the sense that all this religious stuff means anything to them, or that they’re even aware of it. I feel like for the religious stuff to really work we either needed a lot more of it or a lot less. Either characterize them as a race of devoted zealots or just leave them as mindless space monsters. To me it looks like the writer mooshed together two totally different sci-fi tropes without noticing that they’re mutually exclusive and thematically incompatible.

Anyway, now that we’ve given the Kett a clear foundation of physical characteristics we can work on improving the Archon:



me_consort.jpg

In my design, I'd go for the demeanor and tone of the Consort from Mass Effect 1. (Although obviously you'd need a totally different visual design.) I think the Consort's aloof and mysterious delivery would work pretty well for a villain that thinks she's the hero.


The Archon design isn’t that hard and I don’t know how the writer went so wrong. Just ask yourself, “Given what this character believes, how would they behave?”

In my version, the Archon ought to be beautiful. Majestic. Noble. Since “exalting” other species is the Archon’s goal, let’s use that to inform the personality.

From the Archon’s point of view, they’re running a rescue shelter. They find a sad desperate species, doomed to a life of hunger, pain, disease, and aging. Then they “save” this species from their pointless life of torment. They take the interesting and useful genetic traits (if any) from the victim and use them to improve all Kett. To the Archon, all life has value and their unending assimilation of all sapient life is an act of altruism.

Let’s have the Archon see itself as a nurturing being. We can even make the character coded as female, or heck, why not just make it explicitly female? The Archon sees herself as space-Galadriel. Ryder lost her mother[6] in the Milky Way, and the Archon is trying to be a mother-figure to all of the Initiative. This would give us tools to play around with themes of nurturing and motherhood.

The Archon laments every Kett soldier you kill, but also for every Milky Way life her forces take. She really just wants you to stop struggling.

When a species fights back, she doesn’t hate them. She looks at your species the way a vet looks at a scared, trapped, injured animal. Sure, it’s trying to bite you. But that’s only because it’s frightened and hurting and doesn’t know any better. Once we “heal” it, it will embrace us.

This would make her a little unsettling. She’s proposing destroying your free will and everything you hold dear, while at the same time being totally convinced that she’s helping you and that she’s the good guy.

Instead of blustering at you like an idiot, the Archon will constantly be trying to convince you that accepting exaltation will fix your problems. These planets aren’t habitable for you? Become one of the Kett, and all worlds will be habitable for you. And you’ll never get old. Or sick.

That’s a start, but let’s give them a philosophical difference, just to give things some texture…

The Archon is dedicated to perfecting the Kett via genetics. They see the Initiative’s reliance on technology as a shameful flaw and it offends them on a moral level. The Archon sees our shields and firearms and omni-tools as something that’s holding us back. It’s like someone who shows up to a boxing match with a knife, or someone who uses a motorcycle to win a marathon. You’re not just cheating, you’re missing the entire point of the contest. In the Archon’s mind, you don’t deserve to win because your power isn’t “real”. To her, all your tools are ugly cheats.

If you point out to her that the Kett still use vehicles and dropships and spaceships and guns, she’ll explain that they’re working to shed even these tools. Their ultimate goal is to create a species that can travel the stars and explore worlds under its own power. This is their big long-term dream, and they attach a lot of quasi-religious significance to it. She wants you to be a part of this. She’s certain that with Salarian intelligence and Asari biotics[7] she’ll be able to make great progress towards this goal. She also promises she wants humans for their “natural leadership”, but it’s impossible to tell if this is horseshit or not.

At the end, the Archon is simply trying to control the master vault because it will allow her to make all planets in the Heleus cluster uninhabitable for you. Then you won’t have any choice but to accept her offer.

I’m not going to pretend this is brilliant sci-fi. It’s a blend of familiar topes. I’m sure you noticed the Star Trek Borg fingerprints all over it. It’s pretty standard stuff. But it ought to work well enough to serve the shooter gameplay, and give us a villain that won’t induce eye-rolling the moment they appear on screen.



mea_fine.jpg

Everything is fine.


The Archon is a deeply flawed character, across the board, from inception to execution. This isn’t a single mistake or a miscalculation. This isn’t something that could have been fixed with more time for polish. This is a staggering failure that can only be blamed on managerial apathy or incompetence. This studio was formed specifically to create a story-based RPG. The fact that THIS design is what they chose for the main villain of their debut title means that there was something seriously wrong with either the leadership or the design process.
 

Freddie

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Meet the villains:

Andromeda Part 12: The Bad Guise

[..]
This is one of the worst villains I’ve ever seen in a science-fiction story. Sure, guys like Kai Leng, Harbinger, and the Illusive Man might have been more annoying overall, but a lot of their problems were that they were wrong for the world. TIM would be a really cool character in the context of some sort of thriller, and Martin Sheen’s performance was excellent. Kai Leng would have been fine if he was part of a kid’s cartoon. Harbinger would have worked out okay in a campy universe like Last Starfighter or Fifth Element. But the Archon is just irredeemably awful. Everything about him is terrible. His dialog is terrible. The dialog delivery is terrible. The character concept is terrible. The character’s visual design is terrible.

The Archon’s dialog sounds just like Harbinger. He’s got the same overblown way of speaking, and just like Harbinger he’s a complete loser. This guy will belt out things like, “YOU SHALL NEVER DEFEAT MY ELITE GUARDS!” as you slaughter your way through his elite guards.

You might argue that this is supposed to be empowering, that we’re supposed to enjoy proving this guy wrong again and again. But it’s only enjoyable to overcome someone if they come off as cunning or imposing. The Archon is a loser from the moment you meet him, and his only win against you is due to writer-imposed stupidity on the part of the hero.


[..]
Dr. Lexi is probably the only Asari in the game that feels like an Asari. She's a fine character, although the story never does anything with her. She's not even used for exposition.


[..]
The Archon is a deeply flawed character, across the board, from inception to execution. This isn’t a single mistake or a miscalculation. This isn’t something that could have been fixed with more time for polish. This is a staggering failure that can only be blamed on managerial apathy or incompetence. This studio was formed specifically to create a story-based RPG. The fact that THIS design is what they chose for the main villain of their debut title means that there was something seriously wrong with either the leadership or the design process.
1. Again it appears that BioWare is unable to learn. Harbinger in ME2 was indeed interesting to the point where player gets that there's only cheese and neither beef or buns or actually anything else necessary to create but a distraction at all. Well, okay I give quarter of a point for the 'Releasing control' scene where poor bastard wakes up to reality of his last moments. However for one reason or another BW decided to go with one of the worst things of ME2.

2. Shamus has mentioned it in his earlier posts how Asari are something weird in Andromeda. I won't be repeating things, but it's worth a note that developers had a race with they could have done all sort of things with what exists. Shamus writes how Asari Commando character just keeps bringing up in her dialogue her background. Well, no matter how default partner they made Liara, she had depth as historian and someone educated, and was also very able biotic (ridiculously powerful in ME1 if you know how to level her up). I was surprised how BW was able to give depth for something I took as cartoon character, Wrex, and so on. To get back to Asari, Samara in ME2 had depth and exposed one level of world without breaking the world. Asari Commando character could work well, if writers were wanted to make it work, but no. They wanted to go with their own wild goose chase and results are card board character and some sort of Poo Poo Asari version of Cochita Wurst.

In ME: Andromeda it appears that only some side character is working like intended and then even that potential isn't capitalised.

3. According to Wiki: Director(s) Mac Walters. Mike Gamble is also named as one of the producers.

Guys did really great work for... actually if only they worked for Disney (Star Wars) or Microsoft (Halo, Gears of Wars).
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Meet the Angarans:

Andromeda Part 13: Breaking the Language Barrier

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For the first chapter of the game, all the Kett speak in gibberish and you can’t understand any of them. But then we run into the Archon and he speaks to us in English. In the next section we’re going to run into new aliens and it’ll do the same thing: Gibberish, then a sudden switch to plain English when we meet an important character.

In sci-fi, there are several ways you can handle the language problem:

Action Adventure: Everyone speaks / understands English and the audience isn’t supposed to worry about languages. Everyone can usually understand everyone else, even if the audience can’t. (Chewbacca, R2D2, Groot.)

Soft sci-fi: We have magical universal translators so we HEAR everyone in English, even though they’re speaking different languages. (Most of Trek.)

Hard sci-fi: Communication is difficult. If you want to talk to someone, you need to know their language. There are a lot of them, and not all of them are based on sound. Good luck.



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Oh no! The aliens are speaking an unknown language! How can we communicate with them? Did the Initiative ever have a plan for this? As it turns out, we just land. Once we touch down, they all switch to English without anyone raising an eyebrow. If they already knew English, then why didn't they respond when we greeted them in English? What's going on? What are the rules here?


I have no idea what Andromeda is trying to do. It’s obvious the writer doesn’t want to worry about it, so why did they introduce the idea of a language barrier in the first place? Why is the Archon suddenly able to talk to us? You’ve explicitly acknowledged that a language barrier exists, and then you’re not explaining how it was overcome!

At one point in the game[1] SAM has to listen to some alien jabbering and repeat it back to us in English, like an interpreter. In another scene[2] someone refers to “translators”, implying we’re using some sort of Trek-style translator and everyone is really just speaking their own language. Elsewhere you’ll find situations where some Kett speak English and some don’t.

Later in the game[3] we get to a point where you need to open a Kett door using voice activation, and the game gives you two choices: Ryder can try to bluff the door using her imitation of Kett-speak, which is essentially babble. Alternatively, she can command it using plain English. If you choose gibberish, Sara tries to fake her way through making random sounds. Then someone else on the team laughs at her, “What made you think that would work?”

WHY WOULD ANYONE EXPECT ENGLISH TO WORK? BOTH OPTIONS ARE EQUALLY NONSENSICAL!

But for whatever reason, the door opens for English voice commands.

The writer obviously doesn’t care about tackling hard sci-fi language problems, but then they keep bringing up the subject while also changing their unexplained rules on how it all works. This is just as nonsensical as a galaxy where everyone speaks English, but it’s paying all the dialog costs of a more serious form of sci-fi while also distracting us with confusing situations it doesn’t care to explain.

At another point, our squadmate Jaal corrects Ryder on her usage of who / whom. This is strange because he’s from another galaxy and hasn’t had time to learn the nuances of the langage. And this is the type of detail a magical translation machine would simply gloss over. Worse, Addison did the same thing at the start of the game. Why is Mass Effect doing the grammar nazi thing? Why would these two very different characters engage in this same annoying behavior?

At the end of the day, this is a very minor issue. But it’s indicative of the slapdash “too many cooks” problem the game seems to suffer from. It feels like the team never agreed on what kind of game they were making. Different parts of the game were built using different assumptions and it feels like nobody was on the same page.

Escape


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I know I've been really harsh on the artists, but I will say the Angaran homeworld looks really good.


The Archon flagship has locked down the Tempest or used a tractor beam or whatever. Once the Archon’s tedious villainous exposition is over, SAM gets control back and the good guys fly into the Scourge to escape the pursuit. That’s a fine idea for an escape. The problem is that the writer does the exact same thing at the very end of the game but every character reacts as if it’s a clever new idea. It’s a bit like having the Ghostbusters do the trick of crossing the streams in the middle of the movie and then again for the big finale. It takes the punch out of the ending.

Anyway, the Tempest escapes but ends up damaged in the pursuit through the scourge. So they must land on the nearest planet, which is where they were headed anyway. When they arrive, they meet the Angaran people. These are the Angarans:



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Oh, we're speaking English now? Because a second ago everyone was speaking Angaran. Did someone turn on a translator, or are these people already fluent in English?


The Angarans and the Kett are the only two aliens we meet in Andromeda. The writer left behind the Geth, Volus, Hannar, Elchor, Vorcha, Batarian, Quarians, Yahg, Collectors, Rachni[4], and Drell, and to replace them we got the Angara and Kett. We got rid of eleven(!!!) alien species and gained two. This was the writer’s big chance to build a vast new story-world to explore, and they aimed so low and did so little with that opportunity.

Worse, the Angara don’t seem to know anyone besides the Kett. They act like this moment is the first time they ever encountered a friendly species. (And then a little later in the story we see planets where humans and Angarans have been living side-by-side for months. It’s weird.) They’ve been a spacefaring species for centuries and yet we’re the first aliens they’ve ever talked to? The story doesn’t even try to hint that maybe we’re seeing some small corner of a larger whole, and that there are other species out there to meet in future games.

How I’d have done it:

Obviously I’m the sort of writer who would go crazy and invent ten new alien species and give them all personalities and histories and make them all wildly different in terms of physiology and then the modeling and animation team would laugh at me and say “no” because apparently the management doesn’t want to waste money on frivolous things like space aliens in our game about meeting space aliens.


Assuming I’m constrained to a single friendly species, then what we need to do is make it clear we’re only seeing part of a larger whole. The Angara can mention that the scourge keeps explorers and traders away these days, and the Kett pick off everyone else. The Angara are hemmed in this spot between the scourge and the Kett and their fight for survival doesn’t leave them a lot of time for exploration and diplomacy. Maybe Jaal makes reference to some empire or war or other large-scale conflict, but says he’s been fighting the Kett his entire life so he’s never taken much of an interest in events beyond the Heleus Cluster.

I understand if your time and budget constraints force you to make a game “small”, but that doesn’t mean the world itself should be similarly constrained. Even if you don’t show it, hint at it so it can be used next time.

I was really annoyed that this game only gave us two new species, and their faces look so much alike. Then later we learn that the Kett ARE the Angara, so this is intentional. But that means we only really get one new species in this game. I don’t know. No matter how you look at it, it’s disappointing.

Jaal


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I wish I could say the same of you, Jaal.


Sara gets off the ship to parlay with the Angara while everyone else enacts repairs. The Angara want to figure out if they can trust you or not, because their war with the Kett has made them kinda xenophobic. One of the aliens is Jaal, and he volunteers to join your crew to evaluate your people.

Jaal is a bundle of missed opportunities. If you’re only going to have one alien species in your galaxy, then they need to be really interesting. Unfortunately, the Angara have more in common with humans than humans have in common with the species they brought with them.

To be fair, I really love the performance the actor put into him. He’s got this Shakespearean vibe that makes all of his dialog sound a lot more impressive than it really is. It’s like Ian McKellen’s performance as Gandalf: His intonation makes even mundane dialog sound vaguely profound. But a great actor can’t be expected to carry the work of a weak writer, and so Jaal feels like a drama major in a rubber mask has joined your crew.

As you drive around in the Nomad, there are these short little conversations that you get between pairs of characters. These are pretty good, although these once-per game exchanges have a lower priority than the stupid repetitive notifications characters spew out. So you end up with this:

Jaal: So, Cora… what made you want to leave your home and family to come to Andromeda?


Cora: That’s a big question. I think mostly it’s because-

SAM: Pathfinder: I am detecting a Kett presence ahead.

Cora: Let’s get ’em!

And now you will never hear Cora’s answer because SAM decided to notify you about the opportunity to jump out and shoot a bunch of irrelevant dudes at one of the endless number of outposts the designer has vomited all over the map, and which you could see just fine with your own eyeballs.



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Spoiler: He doesn't get particularly emotional.


Anyway, some of these exchanges are amusing, but they often work to make the Angarans as boring as possible. Some examples:

At one point Cora notices that Jaal smells really good and she asks him about his cologne. So then I think this is a setup for some misunderstanding and he’s actually just letting off natural pheromones and then it’s all awkward. But no. Apparently the Angara have cologne and in an unbelievable stroke of luck they happen to enjoy the same types of fragrances that humans do.

Cora asks Jaal if he has any brothers and sisters. He replies that he has eight, and Cora asks how he managed with such a large family. And here I (stupidly) expect the writer to create a little misunderstanding and we’ll discoverer that eight is a really tiny family and females typically have litters of a dozen or more. But no, apparently the Angaran have the exact same attitudes about family size as modern-day human beings do.

Jaal ought to have his mind blown when he comes aboard the Tempest. After centuries of isolation, he finds himself on a ship with Human, Asari, Salarian, Turian and Krogan. There are more intelligent alien species inside the Tempest than his people have ever met. This should send a shockwave through his culture. Instead you just get a short comment from him about how well everyone gets along.



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I think this is supposed to be an example of the Angaran xenophobia and racism, but it's so milquetoast, understated, and inconsistent that it doesn't leave an impression. Instead of making it feel like the Angara are being held back by their prejudices, it feels like they're occasionally cranky for no reason.


Jaal explains that Angarans “feel emotions very strongly”. This is how the writer has conceptualized them, but that’s not how they should see themselves! They should see their own behavior as baseline “normal”. If you want to sell the notion that they’re really emotional, then have Jaal comment on how everyone on the Tempest seems repressed or subdued to him. Maybe have him assume we’re all being “guarded” and “Hiding our emotions” or whatever.

As far as I can tell, the writer was trying to employ the Planet of Hats trope, where an alien species is more or less human-like except for one attribute. This attribute – whatever it is – is their “hat”. The planet of hats trope is well-suited to short-form television where you need to quickly introduce an alien and the show’s idea or theme for this episode. It also allows you to take all those obviously human actors and make them seem a little bit alien despite their low-budget minimalist makeup. Maybe you can’t make them seem strange in appearance, but you can at least make them strange in behavior.

Apparently having strong emotions is the hat the Angara are wearing. Once again, the writer seems to be drawing from tropes without knowing what they’re for or how they’re supposed to be used. The strong emotions thing is incredibly inconsistent. On paper, these guys should be the opposite of Trek Vulcans. They should be wearing their emotions on their sleeve. I’d expect them to be passionate, impulsive, and hotheaded. At best, this comes down to Jaal telling us his people are emotional. It feels less like they have strong emotions and more like they’re just emotionally random. In a game where the facial animations are so janky, having a species defined entirely by their capacity to emote seems like a disastrous design choice.

Even the animators were up to the job, this is still a bad choice because it doesn’t tell us anything about them in a cultural sense.



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Everything is fine.


How I’d have done it:

I really think this “strong emotions” angle is a bad one for space aliens from another galaxy for all the reasons I listed above. But I guess if it was my job to make this work I’d imagine a planet of people that act like teenagers from a Shakespearean tragedy. They would be prone to feuds. They would probably suffer from a lot of one-on-one public duels over personal honor. You’d have to be careful to avoid wounding their pride, but they would be fierce allies once you won them over. They would constantly be professing undying love and then losing interest when the next wave of hormones hit and sent them after a new mate. They would be full of lust for life and prone to debauchery. They would have countless holidays and all of them would be an excuse to drink and feast. Dwarves are often portrayed as rowdy drunks who love food, and you could probably borrow that idea for these guys. They would be very serious about honoring the dead. Perhaps they should have intense familial bonds and build a lot of their identity around their heritage.


Still, this doesn’t really fit with their premise, which is that (spoiler) they’re synthetic beings who were bio-engineered to inhabit this cluster. By “synthetic” I don’t mean they’re robots. I mean they’re synthetic in the sense that they were developed by some unknown alien intelligence rather than being a product of evolution. Why did their creator give them “strong emotions”? Was this an aesthetic choice, or did the creator see some practical value in the emotions? I’m not saying it’s a plot hole that we don’t find the answer to this question, I’m saying it’s odd that the writer never thought to bring it up. They had the makings of an interesting mystery here and they skated around it without even noticing.

The strong emotions thing would be really hard to do properly, and at the end of the day it’s just a really fancy hat. Personally, I’d prefer to do something else. If I found myself on a project like Andromeda where the team is lacking in focus and there doesn’t seem to be a singular vision, then I’d aim for something really easy. We could say that the Angaran homeworld has a strong axial tilt. This would mean that their seasons are really pronounced. This would make them a bit migratory before their space-faring days. As an interstellar species, this would manifest as a desire to travel light. They would get restless if stuck in one place for too long and their culture would have a huge emphasis on the season. Their language would be filled with sayings regarding the changing of seasons and the weather.

That’s not deep and it’s not clever, but it’s something every writer could work with and use in conversation without making a mess of things. Also, unlike “strong emotions” this wouldn’t require a bunch of expensive emoting.

Whatever. Even if we’re forced to go with “strong emotions” as our hat, this entire premise suffers from a flagrant case of telling instead of showing. The most important thing to remember when designing aliens is that everyone sees their own physiology / mating habits / culture as the default “normal”, and everyone else in relation to that. Aliens don’t say, “Our species is very warlike,” they say, “Your species is so afraid of conflict.” They don’t say, “Our families are large”, they say “Your families are tiny, how do you keep from going extinct?”.

You get the idea. I know Trek fell into the bad habit of forehead of the week. Trek could afford to have throwaway aliens because a TV show can give you two dozen episodes a year, but you only get to make a new videogame every three or four years. If you’re only going to give the player ONE new alien, then you really ought to do something more interesting than “I have blue skin and allegedly strong emotions”.
 

FeelTheRads

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Messages
13,716
Peebee talks like a human. At one point Ryder asks her what “Peebee” stands for and she jokes that it stands for “Peanut Butter”

Such Biowarian writing. The same kind of kindergarden humor ever since Minsc. At least in this they've stayed consistent.

Isn’t the entire point of having alien friends the ability for them to offer fresh viewpoints that a human couldn’t give us?

lul, of course not. Different viewpoints is like the most horrible thing for SJWs.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Next planet!

Andromeda Part 14: Welcome to the Voeld

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The next stop on our adventure is Voeld. It’s a giant iceball. As before: we visit three monoliths, then go to the vault, and then the climate begins to recover.

This is how you “fix” these screwed up planets. You do the monoliths, do the vault, and then you run around knocking over Kett outposts and doing sidequests until the habitability score reaches 100%. It’s not hard. The Kett clusters are more common than Starbucks. It doesn’t take skill or ingenuity to fix these places. All you need is the fortitude to see it through. I don’t know who at BioWare thought we wanted more Ubisoft in our BioWare games, but they were wrong.

It’s disappointing that – despite all your efforts – you never see these places change. The sky clears once you activate the vault, but that’s it. Even if you get Eos to “100% habitability”, it’s still a lifeless orange desert. Even if you get Voeld to “100% habitability”, it remains a covered in ice and snow. I guess the Initiative has an extremely flexible definition of “habitability”.



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I know I'm beating a dead horse, but the facial animation in this game is SO BAD.


Yes, it would strain credulity to re-shape the climate within the space of a few days. But we’re already doing that! We make the numeric habitability value of this planet go up using technology we don’t understand built by aliens we don’t understand. What we end up with is a story that’s not grounded enough to give us satisfying or intriguing explanations for its technology, but it’s too grounded to give us a visual depiction of all the terraforming we’ve accomplished. That’s a really strange spot to aim for on the drama vs. details spectrum. If you don’t want to make it deep and thought-provoking then you might as well make it awesome and fun.

Actually, I suspect this is another casualty of the lack of polish. There are a few lines of dialog that make me suspect they intended to make the planets change visually. Sometimes characters will talk about the huge changes you’ve made, and it really feels like it might be setting you up for a big reveal that didn’t make it into the game.

Ubisofted


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The Angara have been living here for hundreds of years and even have major cities on this planet. (That we never get to see, not even on the horizon.) If the vaults hadn't malfunctioned, the Initiative would have arrived to find one of their chosen worlds was already densely populated.


The Ubisoft design isn’t limited to the monoliths. This game has a lot of quests based on repetitive waypoint visits. In previous Mass Effect games you might get a quest like, “Find the transmitter and shut it down.” Here in Andromeda, this has been replaced with “Find all six transmitters sprinkled around the map and shut them down.”

Like I said in my write-up on Mass Effect 2, the original point of these kinds of sidequests wasn’t to make the player run all over the map. In fact, most of the quests involved going to places that were already on your to-do list, so you weren’t really going very far out of your way to do them. The point was to give you someone to talk to at the start and end of an episode / location. The questgiver would introduce you to this place and give you a feel for what’s been going on, and when you turned in the quest their dialog would give you a sense of what’s changed. The point of a sidequest isn’t the fetching or the shooting, it’s the worldbuilding and the characterization.

Sadly, this game is descended from the Mass Effect 3 DNA more than the Mass Effect 1 DNA, so now the sidequests are just an alternate source of loot and XP. The quests themselves are incredibly dry thanks to the fact that…

SAM isn’t a Character, He’s the Narrator


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Sure, the quests are dull, repetitive, and totally lacking in stakes and emotional payoff, but on the upside there are lots of them for you to do!


Instead of allowing the player to bump into a peasant and get some dialog, the game likes to kick off quests when you:
  • Click on a datapad
  • Click on a terminal.
  • Click on a random object in the world.
Occasionally you’ll get to talk to a person to start a quest, but most of the time the quest is resolved in the field and you don’t return to talk to them again.

SAM is the writer’s crutch. You click on the thing, and then SAM will explain the premise of the quest. Then you chase waypoint markers in the wilderness until you’re done. No story. No characters. No choices. You just raise the habitability score at the end, because someone at BioWare thought the “War Assets” concept from Mass Effect 3 would be even better with more repetition and lower stakes.

Not only is the mission design lazy, the dialog itself feels like it was generated by some sort of Mad Libs style system of auto-generated exposition. As one example of countless:

You find a dead Angaran. They have a Kett tracking transmitter hidden in their body. SAM says if we find some more of these, he can “reverse the signal”. That’s not how signals work. A radio transmitter can’t tell you the location of a passive radio listener. But whatever. SAM sends you to find more dead Angarans with tracking chips.

But then after a couple more, SAM says he needs a few more to repair the signal. Then the next one he says he’s still trying to decrypt the signal.

This quest is only five or six lines of dialog from one character. How is it possible for the writer to lose the plot like this? Okay, it doesn’t matter and I’m sure most players don’t notice or care if the technobabble gibberish is consistent, but if you’re going to write all this dialog and have an actor read it, why not just make the messages fit together? Isn’t that the point of having a writer in the first place? They come up with a premise for a story that the audience can experience. Here the writer didn’t have a premise in mind. It’s like they thought their job was just to fill X minutes with spoken dialog.



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Everything is fine.


In another mission you need a door access code. Sometimes SAM can remotely hack / manipulate massive alien technology while you’re walking around and sometimes he can’t open a simple door built by humans without you finding the right access code and inputting it yourself. This is one of the latter cases. Not only have three different space pirates stored their shared password on three different data pads, and not only have all three messages been corrupted in such a way that makes them completely readable except for the password, and not only has each datapad miraculously scrambled a different part of the password, but SAM knows ahead of time he’s going to need you to find three datapads before he can open the door. It’s functionally equivalent to needing to find the three colored keycards in DOOM 1993, but it makes way less sense and also buries you in boring dialog explaining the ridiculous premise. If the designer didn’t care about the story of this quest, then why not make this a simple mechanical task with no dialog? If they did care about the story, then why didn’t they write one? They paid all the costs of having a story without getting any of the benefits!

Most of the busywork fetch quests are like this. They’re not interesting, they don’t tell a story, they contain no characters, they perform no worldbuilding, and they don’t even make basic sense on their own terms.

The story is constantly talking about technology without ever saying anything about technology. It’s like this is the cargo cult version of details-first sci-fi. It feels like the writer doesn’t really understand details-first fiction, but they know that Trek characters spend a lot of time jabbering about warp drives and deflector dishes so they figured technobabble Mad Libs must be the secret.

The Big Reveal


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Thanks SAM. I was worried I was going to have to do something heroic or main-character-ish to get through the impossible shield, but looks like you've overcome this obstacle without risking us experiencing any tension, drama, or character growth. Keep it up buddy.


The Angara have a religious leader called the Moshae[1]. She’s been taken by the Kett. We need to rescue her. The base where she is being held is protected by a forcefield, but SAM is able to magically hack a hole in it using his bluetooth connection or whatever.

Then we get to shoot our way through this Kett fortress. Here we see classrooms where the Kett are… taught? Indoctrinated? Brainwashed? Congregate for worship? This is the one point in the game where the writer makes some vague gestures in the direction of their religion, but there’s nothing to it and it never comes up again. It feels like some parts of the game thought they were religious zealots and others thought they were mind slaves and nobody noticed the discrepancy.



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This floating Angaran prisoner seems to have no idea what's going on or what's about to happen. After the transformation, he'll instantly be a full Kett and attack you on sight. So if the injection of science juice instantly brainwashes him, what's all the religious / classroom stuff for?


Inside the fortress we find the Kett are transforming the captured Angaran into more Kett. This is where we discover that the Kett are an organic version of the Borg. It’s a major turning point for poor Jaal, who realizes the Kett he’s been killing all his life are actually his people. The main characters are annoyingly slow about coming to this conclusion. The player will probably figure it out long before the characters do, which means the moment of big reveal loses all of its momentum. It’s not a big reveal to the audience. Instead it’s the moment when our heroes finally catch up to what we already know.

The Cardinal


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The dialog in this game is pretty hit and miss, but in this scene the quality plummets to atrocious.


The final room has the Cardinal, the boss of this particular murder dungeon. She’s got a shield that makes her invulnerable. To bring down the shield, you have to shoot this metal sphere that orbits around her. (So it’s only available as a target half the time.) The sphere has a massive HP pool. Once you kill the sphere, the shield goes down. Then you’ve got four seconds to knock a dent in the Cardinal’s HP bar before a brand new sphere pops up and you start the process over again.

Heads up: If you’re playing as a Vanguard, don’t use charge on her. It’s instant death. The moment you slam into her it cuts to this frozen-in-time side view where it looks like there’s supposed to be a QTE to escape, but there isn’t. You just die. Same goes for melee attacks. Entering melee distance is instant death. (It’s a bit like the Asari Banshee in Mass Effect 3.)

The first time I fought this nutter, I used grenades to quickly kill her mooks and then tried to finish her with my guns and powers. I was there for a long, long time. Each time her shield went down I’d knock just a tiny bit off her health bar. I eventually used every single bullet in the area[2]. In the end I had to pelt her to death with my special ability[3]whenever it came off cooldown. Meanwhile, my teammates annoyed her with their nerf bullets. The fight took so long that I wondered if I was under-leveled[4], but then I realized her mooks seemed about right in terms of durability.



mea_voeld9.jpg

Like I said, atrocious.


Ignoring the possibility of hand cramp, the fight wasn’t hard at all. The Cardinal has this attack she throws at you that has a wide AoE and can pass through walls to hit you. It’s hard to avoid and it instantly nuked my shields, but that’s all it does. By the time she shot another one, my shields had recovered. Which means I was effectively invulnerable and she was only 99% invulnerable. My victory was assured, assuming I had the patience to see it through.

The second time I fought her, I saved my grenades until her shield went down. Then I threw all of them at once and she died on the spot.



mea_voeld10.jpg

Oh good. The Moshae's immune system is apparently at 90%. She ought to be fine.


Well, she didn’t actually “die”. She gets back up and you have a dialog with her and then your character kills her in a cutscene without your input, so that’s basically terrible. But the point is I won the fight in a single cycle instead of needing to burn down her shield orb over and over.

I honestly can’t tell which of these two ridiculous broken fights is the “intended” way to play. The Cardinal is a monumental chore if you don’t know the trick and trivial if you do.

Nuke the Base


mea_voeld11.jpg

Okay, we won't destroy the place now, in exchange for you freeing the prisoners. Is there a time limit on this agreement? Can we just come back tomorrow with our nuke? Are we obligated to leave this place alone forever? If you kidnap a bunch more people again and bring them here, am I still obligated to abide by this localized truce?


The game offers you a choice: You can nuke the base now, which will kill all of the Angara they have in holding cells. Or you can free the Angara but leave the base standing. The Moshae wants the former but your squad buddy Jaal wants the latter.

It’s a fine choice, I guess. As far as I could tell, it only changes the dialog you get from Jaal and the Moshae and has no mechanical / story impact. It seemed like it should be possible to rescue the Angara and THEN destroy the base. That would be a far more interesting choice. The player could promise to leave the Kett base standing in exchange for the prisoners it holds, but once the prisoners are gone you could have the option to honor your agreement or kill the base. It would only take a few lines of additional dialog, and it would make the entire scenario so much more interesting.

But whatever. Unlike the Collector base in Mass Effect 2 the writer doesn’t negate the choice later.
 

Temenos

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The comments in the article are quality. Especially the mocking of the Cardinal's speech during combat and how badly the Reaper dialog in Mass Effect 1 would have be written with Andromeda's writers.

YOU EXIST BECAUSE WE ALLOW IT. YOU WILL END BECAUSE WE DEMAND IT. YOU INACCURATE STUPID.
 

Freddie

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Looks like ME: Andromeda wasn't just mediocre but really bad game. I really appreciate Shamus doing this, but experience must be tedious. However there is very clear pattern here how they copied the worst aspects from series in this, and somehow managed to make them even worse. They had DLC and new series planned, though I wonder in what sort of pipe dream producer(s) were living in, when they expected this formula to work?

Really makes me think of these big corporations and how little accountability there appears to be. Andromeda crashed and burned the entire series but how the hell this mess happened to begin with?
 

Freddie

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'It was Aliens'

But no it wasn't. Even BW themself didn't catch the ball after ME3 fiasco, people on top of EA should have done that.

ME: Andromeda was a disaster, Battlefield V bombed, next Star Wars game cancelled. Next game coming up is BW's Anthem which no one can tell what makes it stand out from the crowd.

How is this good management?
 

Bohrain

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It's not like the suits understand anything about the product itself.
If a title bombs without being released in a horribly buggy state I doubt the higher ups ever attribute it to poor design. To them it's just a sign that some IP or general formula has run it's course, be it single player scifi RPG or something else.
 

Freddie

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It's not like the suits understand anything about the product itself.
If a title bombs without being released in a horribly buggy state I doubt the higher ups ever attribute it to poor design. To them it's just a sign that some IP or general formula has run it's course, be it single player scifi RPG or something else.
Sure looks like that, though I can't but think that they are also perhaps successfully misleading their investors too. Or ride on promises supposed potential gains on expectations of what liked to see on the market and reflect them back. So in the end it's situation like blind leading the blind.

Still, outside their sports games their recent releases has bombed or has been cancelled. Somebody should be asking questions.
 

Akratus

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What little talent at bioware was left during ME3's production basically left the company or was put on Anthem. They have a high turnover rate according to ex-employee reviews, and increasingly hired more and more based on race and gender and certainly not talent. Knowing this Andromeda is exactly the type of childish incompetent schlock one should expect. The only entertainment value is watching the fan rage, glitches and blue haired cringe inducing writing from a distance with some popcorn. I've seen a lot of bad games that aren't truly dumpster fires being described as such but this is definitely one. A multi million dollar, shiny, crooked dumpster fire. Doesn't really deserve any serious analysis, but an autopsy is appropriate.
 
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Orange Planet Bad:

Andromeda Part 15: Elaaden’s Orbit

mea_splash.jpg





I have no idea why the designers decided to make two of our five habitable worlds into orange deserts. Sure, the planets are a little different. Eos is a bit like the Mojave Desert and Elaaden is more an expanse of sand dunes like the Sahara. I wonder if their cobbled-together Frostbite offshoot wasn’t up to the job of depicting forests, meadows, and swamps[1]. Even if we decide to have two different deserts, did they really need to be the same shade of orange? It’s space! This science in this game runs on cartoon logic anyway, so why not go wild and give us a purple desert or whatever?

Disastronaut


mea_elaaden3.jpg

The tempest is currently flying through Elaaden's atmosphere in this shot, which means that gas giant is close and the other moons are REALLY close.


I have a confession to make. I’m really into astronomy. Not real astronomy, mind you. I like shallow pop-astronomy. I like having complex questions boiled down to simple answers that you can understand without any complex mathematics. What would it be like to stand on the surface of X? How many livable exoplanets are there? How long would it take to get a message to someone in another star system? How long would it take to fly there? Is the space elevator really possible? What are the odds that there’s a planet out there with sexy blue-skinned women who want to learn about this thing we earthlings call kissing[2]?

This means that occasionally I feel the need to take my shallow, badly-understood middle school pop-science and try to use it to ask interesting questions. I’m afraid today is one of those days.

You Tried


mea_elaaden2.jpg

The local temperature is allegedly above boiling. We have environments on Earth that are way more hospitable than Elaaden, and we STILL consider them uninhabitable. Why is anyone bothering with this place?


I’ll give credit to whoever designed Elaaden: They tried to base it on some kind of science. Sadly, they messed it up. I did the same thing in my orbital bombardment calculations during the Mass Effect 3 analysis. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It’s easy to do hours of meticulous research but then stumble on one detail and turn the whole thing into a joke.

The game explains that Elaaden is “tidally locked”, which means that it’s always daytime on one side of the planet, and night on the other. That’s good science! Except, Elaaden is also the moon of a gas giant. This means that it’s tidally locked to its host planet, not the sun[3]. Which means it can’t always be daytime.

This is a small detail and I doubt most people would notice. It’s not a terrible fault, and I actually appreciate that the writer made the effort. But just for fun let’s take a break from nitpicking Andromeda and explore this idea a little. Let’s ask ourselves…

What Would Elaaden Be Like?


mea_elaaden5.jpg

Was this place habitable before the vaults went wrong? It sorta looks like it's been a sand-blasted furnace for a long, long time.


The host planet is a gas giant, like Jupiter in our solar system. The planet isn’t given a name within the game[4], so let’s name it after Tinia, an Etruscan god that occupied a similar place as the god Jupiter on the org chart of their mythology. To keep things simple, let’s assume that Tinia is of similar size and mass to Jupiter.

If Elaaden is tidally locked, that means one side of the planet always faces Tinia and the other side always faces away from it. However, this won’t result in “always day” or “always night”, because Elaaden must orbit around Tinia. (If it didn’t, it would fall into its host planet and vanish in the crushing depths.) This is the same relationship that the moon has with Earth. No matter when you look up at the moon, you’re always seeing the same side of it. One side of the moon always faces us, and the other side of the moon faces away, into empty space. We call the latter the “dark side” of the moon, but it’s only “dark” in the sense that we can never see it from Earth. It actually gets exactly as much sunlight as the “light” side of the moon. The new moon (the point of the month when the moon is dark to us) is when the moon is positioned such that the side facing us isn’t getting any sunlight, and the supposed “dark side” of the moon is getting it instead.



mea_elaaden4.jpg

I'm pretty sure SAM is talking crazy. I can't see how you can be tidally locked to two different bodies at once. That doesn't make any sense.


So what would a day be like on Elaaden? That question is a lot more complicated on Elaaden than it is on Earth. Here, our day / night cycle is determined by Earth spinning on its axis. Elaaden doesn’t spin on its axis[5], so our day / night cycle will actually come from how fast Elaaden orbits Tinia. So now the question is, “How long is Elaaden’s orbital period?”

Going back to Jupiter for reference: Jupiter has 4 real moons and 75 more oddly-shaped rocks that we’re obliged to call moons because Jupiter is the biggest planet and we can’t risk pissing it off. The four main moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Because of orbital resonance, moons can’t have arbitrary orbital periods relative to each other. If one moon had an orbital period of 100 hours and another had an orbital period of 101 hours, then they would quickly pull each other out of whack. Maybe they would crash and merge, or one would get thrown off, or they would pull on each other until they fell into a proper resonance.

To keep this simple, let’s just borrow the orbital periods of Jupiter’s four main moons: Io does a lap around Jupiter once every 42 hours. Europa makes the trip every 85 hours. Ganymede does it in 172 hours, and Callisto in 17 days.



mea_elaaden6.jpg

All these pissed of Krogan aren't really helping the habitability rating of the planet.


42 hours wouldn’t be a bad day length. Sure, Humans would have a lousy time with it, but that’s going to be a problem no matter where we settle. 85 is somewhat more troublesome. That means the sun will be up for 42 straight hours, followed by 42 hours of darkness. At that point you have bigger problems to worry about than keeping a proper sleep schedule. You might be able to grow crops on that world, but they would need to be very tolerant of temperature extremes[6]. A 172 hour cycle would probably be uninhabitable, and a 17 day cycle would give you a rhythmic cataclysm to deal with.

The problem here is that you’re heating up when you’re in direct sunlight and you’re cooling down when you’re not. On Earth that process is fast enough that we don’t suffer from too many extremes. It’s like cooking a hot dog over an open flame. If you turn constantly, then it’ll cook evenly. If you cook it for an hour on one side before turning it over, then one side will be scorched while the other remains raw.



mea_elaaden7.jpg

Are these trees leftover from before the broken vaults ruined the climate, or are they adapted to this environment?


Think of the temperature climb you get on a typical day between sunrise and midday. Now imagine that process kept going for several more hours. The day side of the planet would quickly become dangerously hot and the night side would get dangerously cold. Humans have a hard time surviving above 49C / 120F, and plant life[7] can’t take prolonged periods below freezing. A long day / night cycle will take you beyond these two extremes in a single day. Maybe a nice thick cloud cover could level out the temperature extremes. That might insulate enough to slow down both the heating and cooling. Sadly, Elaaden has clear skies.

But Shamus, why couldn’t Elaaden have an orbital period of 24 hours?

I think it’s possible? If you’re willing to accept Universe Sandbox2 as a legitimate depiction of celestial bodies, then the Earth could indeed orbit Jupiter once every 24 hours. If you want to orbit Jupiter in 24 hours, then you need to orbit it at a distance of 180,000 miles. Jupiter has a spherical radius of 43,441 miles, which means you’d still be above the planet’s surface. (And not caught in its atmospheric cloud of doom.) This would also put you well above the roche limit, so your planet won’t get torn apart by tidal forces and turned into a pretty planetary ring.

But I’m not sure what the ramifications would be of orbiting something that big, that close. Your moon is going to get hammered with radiation. Tinia would loom quite large in the sky. On the other hand:



mea_elaaden1.jpg

Boy howdy, that is CLOSE.


Visually, it does appear to be quite close. Elaaden is clearly closer to Tinia than Io is to Jupiter, so a near 24 hour cycle might be possible. Then again, this image also shows the other moons being incredibly close to Elaaden and this is obviously an image designed with artistic, rather than scientific, concerns in mind.

If Elaaden orbited Tinia at the distance suggested by the above image, then it would make for a very strange day. On Earth, eclipses are rare because the moon only goes around the Earth once a month, and it’s pretty small in the sky so it doesn’t always line up just right to block the sun. Here on Elaaden we’re going around once a day, and Tinia looms so large in the sky that a daily eclipse would be unavoidable.

On earth, a lunar eclipse is when the Earth is positioned directly between the sun and the moon. (This is different from the more exciting solar eclipse, when the moon blocks our view of the sun.) During a lunar eclipse, the moon passes into the shadow of Earth. You might expect the moon to go dark, but what ends up happening is that the moon turns orange. If you picture yourself standing on the moon and looking up at the Earth, it’s easier to understand where the orange comes from. The Earth is in front of the sun, and Earth’s atmosphere is backlit. Essentially, you’re seeing a sunset that goes all the way around Earth so it’s ringed in orange-red light. On Elaaden, this would happen every single day.



mea_earth-jupiter.jpg

Here is a simulation of Earth orbiting Jupiter in Universe Sandbox 2. The Earth would pass into Jupiter's shadow for part of every orbit.


Let’s assume we’re on the side of Elaaden that faces Tinia, positioned so that our host planet is directly overhead. The sun would rise in the east in the morning[8], and then sometime before mid-day the sun would duck behind Tinia. (Remember, from our point of view Tinia is in a fixed spot overhead.) This would result in an eclipse that would last for hours. Sometime in the afternoon we’d exit the eclipse, and then we’d have sunlight again until nightfall. Given the size of Tinia, this would make for a sort of two-phase day cycle. A 24 hour orbit might go something like this:
  • 5 hours of daylight as the sun rises.
  • 2 hours of orange[9] tinted semi-darkness as Tinia passes in front of the sun.
  • 5 hours of daylight as the sun emerges from behind Tinia and then sets.
  • 12 hours of darkness.
If we were on the exact opposite side of Elaaden, then we’d just have a normal day / night cycle. The only strange thing is that we would never, ever see our host planet. We’d also be shielded from a lot of the radiation Tinia would be throwing out, so this is probably a better place to live.

I do wonder what life would be like on Elaaden. How would people behave on a world with no day / night cycle? Sure, on Earth you have six months of light / dark in high latitude regions, but even in those places you still get some variation in lighting. How would people cope on a world where the sun never moved? How would they react to these extreme temperatures? Would they prefer to build underground to escape the heat? Are people using some sort of super-sunblock, or do we have technology to protect against UV burns? Does this planet have seasons? Are we currently in the warm season or the cool season? Are people planning to dig for water, or is the plan to just import it all?

Hopefully you didn’t find this exercise too tedious. For me, this is a big part of the appeal of sci-fi. “Given these unfamiliar parameters, how would people behave and what would life be like?” Andromeda is never interested in exploring these sorts of questions. The writer keeps presenting scenarios that could be interesting and describing it using vocabulary that suggests some level of scientific rigor went into it, but then nothing ever comes of it. The questions are ignored and the science is either shallow or wrong.

It’s all moot anyway. The game makes a big deal about how it’s always daytime on Elaaden, but Mass Effect Andromeda doesn’t support a day / night cycle so it’s always the same time of day everywhere you go on every planet. It’s a shame. Changing light conditions might have really helped to make these mono-climate planets a little more interesting.

Are We Doing Science or Not?


mea_elaaden10.jpg

There are football field sized pockets where the temp is 40C and you're safe. Then most of the surface is over 50C. Then pockets where it's above boiling. That sort of danger zone mechanic made sense on the radiation planet, but here it makes no sense. Are we supposed to assume there are unseen force fields creating these abrupt temperature differentials?


At one point SAM warns that if you fell in a sinkhole here on Elaaden, your blood would boil in 75 seconds. I don’t know what to make of this line. How is this different from anywhere else on the surface? Is the writer suggesting that it’s somehow hotter inside of a sinkhole? Maybe it’s suggesting that being trapped in direct sunlight that’s the problem, but most of the surface is rolling dunes with no shelter so being in a sinkhole isn’t any different from what you’re normally doing. In response to this, Ryder suggests they go to the “climate controlled paradise of the Nomad”. But, aren’t their space suits already climate controlled? They have to be, right? Otherwise you’re dead the moment you get out of the Nomad. Is this a joke that doesn’t land, or science that doesn’t make sense?

At another point SAM says that Elaaden is tidally locked to both the host planet and one of it’s sister moons?! Is the writer suggesting some crazy three body arrangement in an attempt to justify Elaaden’s fantastical skybox, or did they seriously write all this without ever looking up what tidal locking is?



mea_fine.jpg

Everything is fine.


I bring this up because it’s yet another example of how this team didn’t seem to have any idea what kind of game they were making. The artists were making photogenic Star Wars style mono-climate planets. The writers were trying to do nerdy science fiction, but it doesn’t work because the portrayal is wrong or incoherent. Once again, the game is paying the costs of details-first science fiction without getting any of the benefits. People who are just here to shoot space marines and bang hot aliens aren’t going to care about all this Neil deGrasse Tyson shit, and people that do care are going to be frustrated because it doesn’t make any sense. Regardless of which kind of player you are, all this science talk just underscores what an uninhabitable wasteland this place is and how dumb it is that anyone is trying to settle here.

I disliked Mass Effect 3 because I didn’t think the tone, plot, and theme didn’t work with the world. I dis agreed with the writer, but at least they had a vision. Here it feels like everyone on the team was just doing their own thing and nobody was in charge.

That’s enough about planetary orbits and silly science. Next week we’ll get back to fixing these planets.
 

Nutria

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I think this is part of a greater problem in our culture over the last 20 years or so where everyone's inspiration comes from comic books and retarded juvenile shit like that as opposed to science, history, classics like Shakespeare, etc. You get people trying to think up something that would be cool but their imaginations are stunted because they know so little about the real world.
 
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Author is looking for things to be upset about, he should just stop writing now
"WELL THEY DIDN'T GET THIS SPECIFIC THING ABOUT TIDALLY LOCKED PLANETS RIGHT! HA! ENTIRE GAME RUINED!"
Really?
What's next, he'll tell me that reapers and biotic powers don't really exist?
 

TheImplodingVoice

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I think this is part of a greater problem in our culture over the last 20 years or so where everyone's inspiration comes from comic books and retarded juvenile shit like that as opposed to science, history, classics like Shakespeare, etc. You get people trying to think up something that would be cool but their imaginations are stunted because they know so little about the real world.
Science fiction in general has this problem. I am an avid sci-fi reader. But I find it difficult to read any sci-fi from most modern authors because it's all a bunch of shit. Very little "science" left. Of course there are still authors like Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson(Anathem, Seveneves and Cryptonimicon were are fucking GOAT), Peter F. Hamilton and a few more that do write really good sci-fi without trying to be "progressive" and there's a lot of science in it. Video games has the same problem where all inspiration is taken from stuff from more recent things. And everyone is trying to be "progressive". That's what's hurting all forms of sci-fi. Andromeda felt more like a teeny pop "big bang theory" bullshit game. I couldn't finish it
 

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I really appreciate what Shamus is doing, there is this other pattern there where he ponders different solutions for different kind of issues this terrible product has and I must say I really like his approach most of the time. It's also tells quite a story not only about writing, but also leadership in the Andromeda project.


I think this is part of a greater problem in our culture over the last 20 years or so where everyone's inspiration comes from comic books and retarded juvenile shit like that as opposed to science, history, classics like Shakespeare, etc. You get people trying to think up something that would be cool but their imaginations are stunted because they know so little about the real world.

Science fiction in general has this problem. I am an avid sci-fi reader. But I find it difficult to read any sci-fi from most modern authors because it's all a bunch of shit. Very little "science" left. Of course there are still authors like Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson(Anathem, Seveneves and Cryptonimicon were are fucking GOAT), Peter F. Hamilton and a few more that do write really good sci-fi without trying to be "progressive" and there's a lot of science in it. Video games has the same problem where all inspiration is taken from stuff from more recent things. And everyone is trying to be "progressive". That's what's hurting all forms of sci-fi. Andromeda felt more like a teeny pop "big bang theory" bullshit game. I couldn't finish it
I think one of the worst problems of gaming industry which reflects for poor quality products, ever shifting goals and whole scheme where it's not the people with the best ideas but with the best sales pitch and all the men and women merely players etc. comes from some sort of sub-cultural incest, which your posts practically describes. Andromeda is good showcase for result of this sort of thinking, a product designed by people who are supposed to understand desires of their audience because they share their interest. Result, financial disaster because no one likes the product. Not because of it's too hard core, nor too progressive, but simply shallow people creating a shallow game, which turned out to be one terrible product.

Some issues that comes with pandering to subculture(s).

Comics, novels, and certain other products, Star Trek (shit niche with huge brand recognition and invested core audience) Star Wars (also shit but doesn't really pretend to be sci-fi but fantasy in space, also core audience with huge brand recognition) has their audiences. Writing and getting bad sci-fi novel published is of course a big deal for writer in case lot's of time has went to that product, yet there is this audience who never gets tired of their earth navies in space doing 2 dimensional combat, cheap copies of C.S. Forrester's Hornblower, with other totally flat characters whom characteristics may appear to be something quite hilarious if you have some life experience. Part of this niche doesn't get anywhere because it's core audience wants to keep reading about those stories and about manly man and heroic yet femine women, but deeply despise anything sexual. Lot's of people read them as they are, pulp, but what I have read from the customer reviews and then ended up being disappointed with products, this is a factor. Even producing these novels are cheap compared to games which reflects to product prices, they need support of their core audience.

What Mass Effect IMO did right in the beginning is that while they name dropped Trek and Wars, what they were actually trying to do was fresh take on sci-fi in games. Karpyshyn doesn't get enough credit for creating the setting and Hudson as producer and doctors for getting what they had in their hands and whoever had vision to get E'Toile in team. Note: BioWare was still it's own company back then. I guess success of KotOR and ME was potential the EA saw and the rest is decline (and why does this always happen with EA? but let's NOT go there). In the end Karpyshyn ended writing KotOR MMO and I guess Star Wars novels? because that's where the money is.

While ME is far from the perfect game, maybe real will to create something new from the old pieces, I think core elements came from works done in '70's and with other influences being cyberpunk and other works, like Garrus not being the vigilante at most, but damn good detective among other things. Games like Starflight and Star Control, which are really different kind of games. I guess no one will ever tell how much it was a result of experimentation. Anyway, it managed to lay foundation for two more or less successful sequels, because it after all didn't try to be in this niche, or that niche, but interesting game! (at the time). I do wonder, say instead of Andromeda BW were lifted something else from the beginning of series? Krogan outbreed everything, Asari can reproduce with any species, offspring always being an an Asari, Geth were menacing as hell. Where that puts Humans, Turians and other races? It's actually quite gloomy situation, but I digress.

While implementation left things to be desired in few departments, overall it managed to grab attention of gamers who weren't necessarily interested about sci-fi. I think the biggest contributing factor to ME2's success was that it, like actually good works, say Star Control, is not sci-fi game for second, it's good game at first! Like Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Gibson did mentionable works, because they are important outside of their niche. ME managed to get enough traction among gamers in general because as entertainment product, it had wide enough appeal to make series because 1st. and 2nd. bought enough good will from audience that they too thought that series will stay as what it is. Original and decent to good games (in general sence).

Progressive aspects, those are IMO crutch. It's something post-modern that really doesn't mean anything any more. Neuromancer was progressive work at the time, not because of Gibson got details of technology exactly right, but because it's vision of how society will change and look what happened? Then there is other side of things and that's not actually new. There was this woman, Troi on Trek series and then did that character ever do anything? EA can put homosexual options on pedestal, but majority of gamers (as general population) will be heterosexual, but if overall writing is shallow then also 'progressive' characters will be shallow. So what's the point?

So perhaps for Codexers and developers at least, it might be good to ask if blaming progressiveness is actually a productive thing, but calling spade a spade, an umbrella for bad writing, excuse for nonsensical settings and general lazy and indifferent creation of settings, if not outright hostile attitude towards audience, shallow attempt on riding on whatever appears to be trends now and perhaps even trying to get imagery credits from Tim Cook.

It might also be good to think that Shakespeare isn't the literature, piano isn't the music. Many months ago there were this Czech team trying to get their cyberpunk game funded on Kickstarter. They failed but I paid attention their vision of the setting they had created. They really wanted to make Ghost in the Shell influenced game and in these cases it might be good to ponder what it was in real life that possibly inspired Masamune Shirow etc. Then look for other contexts in the world and get something that might be easier to market. I don't know.
 

TheImplodingVoice

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I really appreciate what Shamus is doing, there is this other pattern there where he ponders different solutions for different kind of issues this terrible product has and I must say I really like his approach most of the time. It's also tells quite a story not only about writing, but also leadership in the Andromeda project.


I think this is part of a greater problem in our culture over the last 20 years or so where everyone's inspiration comes from comic books and retarded juvenile shit like that as opposed to science, history, classics like Shakespeare, etc. You get people trying to think up something that would be cool but their imaginations are stunted because they know so little about the real world.

Science fiction in general has this problem. I am an avid sci-fi reader. But I find it difficult to read any sci-fi from most modern authors because it's all a bunch of shit. Very little "science" left. Of course there are still authors like Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson(Anathem, Seveneves and Cryptonimicon were are fucking GOAT), Peter F. Hamilton and a few more that do write really good sci-fi without trying to be "progressive" and there's a lot of science in it. Video games has the same problem where all inspiration is taken from stuff from more recent things. And everyone is trying to be "progressive". That's what's hurting all forms of sci-fi. Andromeda felt more like a teeny pop "big bang theory" bullshit game. I couldn't finish it
I think one of the worst problems of gaming industry which reflects for poor quality products, ever shifting goals and whole scheme where it's not the people with the best ideas but with the best sales pitch and all the men and women merely players etc. comes from some sort of sub-cultural incest, which your posts practically describes. Andromeda is good showcase for result of this sort of thinking, a product designed by people who are supposed to understand desires of their audience because they share their interest. Result, financial disaster because no one likes the product. Not because of it's too hard core, nor too progressive, but simply shallow people creating a shallow game, which turned out to be one terrible product.

Some issues that comes with pandering to subculture(s).

Comics, novels, and certain other products, Star Trek (shit niche with huge brand recognition and invested core audience) Star Wars (also shit but doesn't really pretend to be sci-fi but fantasy in space, also core audience with huge brand recognition) has their audiences. Writing and getting bad sci-fi novel published is of course a big deal for writer in case lot's of time has went to that product, yet there is this audience who never gets tired of their earth navies in space doing 2 dimensional combat, cheap copies of C.S. Forrester's Hornblower, with other totally flat characters whom characteristics may appear to be something quite hilarious if you have some life experience. Part of this niche doesn't get anywhere because it's core audience wants to keep reading about those stories and about manly man and heroic yet femine women, but deeply despise anything sexual. Lot's of people read them as they are, pulp, but what I have read from the customer reviews and then ended up being disappointed with products, this is a factor. Even producing these novels are cheap compared to games which reflects to product prices, they need support of their core audience.

What Mass Effect IMO did right in the beginning is that while they name dropped Trek and Wars, what they were actually trying to do was fresh take on sci-fi in games. Karpyshyn doesn't get enough credit for creating the setting and Hudson as producer and doctors for getting what they had in their hands and whoever had vision to get E'Toile in team. Note: BioWare was still it's own company back then. I guess success of KotOR and ME was potential the EA saw and the rest is decline (and why does this always happen with EA? but let's NOT go there). In the end Karpyshyn ended writing KotOR MMO and I guess Star Wars novels? because that's where the money is.

While ME is far from the perfect game, maybe real will to create something new from the old pieces, I think core elements came from works done in '70's and with other influences being cyberpunk and other works, like Garrus not being the vigilante at most, but damn good detective among other things. Games like Starflight and Star Control, which are really different kind of games. I guess no one will ever tell how much it was a result of experimentation. Anyway, it managed to lay foundation for two more or less successful sequels, because it after all didn't try to be in this niche, or that niche, but interesting game! (at the time). I do wonder, say instead of Andromeda BW were lifted something else from the beginning of series? Krogan outbreed everything, Asari can reproduce with any species, offspring always being an an Asari, Geth were menacing as hell. Where that puts Humans, Turians and other races? It's actually quite gloomy situation, but I digress.

While implementation left things to be desired in few departments, overall it managed to grab attention of gamers who weren't necessarily interested about sci-fi. I think the biggest contributing factor to ME2's success was that it, like actually good works, say Star Control, is not sci-fi game for second, it's good game at first! Like Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Gibson did mentionable works, because they are important outside of their niche. ME managed to get enough traction among gamers in general because as entertainment product, it had wide enough appeal to make series because 1st. and 2nd. bought enough good will from audience that they too thought that series will stay as what it is. Original and decent to good games (in general sence).

Progressive aspects, those are IMO crutch. It's something post-modern that really doesn't mean anything any more. Neuromancer was progressive work at the time, not because of Gibson got details of technology exactly right, but because it's vision of how society will change and look what happened? Then there is other side of things and that's not actually new. There was this woman, Troi on Trek series and then did that character ever do anything? EA can put homosexual options on pedestal, but majority of gamers (as general population) will be heterosexual, but if overall writing is shallow then also 'progressive' characters will be shallow. So what's the point?

So perhaps for Codexers and developers at least, it might be good to ask if blaming progressiveness is actually a productive thing, but calling spade a spade, an umbrella for bad writing, excuse for nonsensical settings and general lazy and indifferent creation of settings, if not outright hostile attitude towards audience, shallow attempt on riding on whatever appears to be trends now and perhaps even trying to get imagery credits from Tim Cook.

It might also be good to think that Shakespeare isn't the literature, piano isn't the music. Many months ago there were this Czech team trying to get their cyberpunk game funded on Kickstarter. They failed but I paid attention their vision of the setting they had created. They really wanted to make Ghost in the Shell influenced game and in these cases it might be good to ponder what it was in real life that possibly inspired Masamune Shirow etc. Then look for other contexts in the world and get something that might be easier to market. I don't know.
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Meet the Krogan:

Andromeda Part 16: Morda Meets The Eye

mea_splash.jpg


Elaaden is where the Krogan decided to settle when they left the Nexus. There’s some local politics you need to sort out here to stabilize the region. Morda has appointed herself as “Overlord” of all Krogan here. She’s bellicose, confrontational, and prideful. She’s also proof that bringing the Krogan on this expedition was a foolish move, surpassed only in the foolishness of betraying them. I much prefer stories that have a sort of inevitability to them, where mistakes are grievous but understandable. The mistakes made by the Andromeda Initiative are so idiotic that I sometimes lose interest in helping out. I often find myself thinking, “Screw it. These morons deserve everything that happens to them.”

Assuming you’re not going to turn the game off, you’re going to need to deal with Morda. There’s another Krogan, Strux, who is more cunning and less overtly warmongering. I really thought the game was setting up a choice between a warmonger Krogan leader or a devious Krogan leader, but you can’t actually side with Strux. Instead, Strux attempts a coup that brings about his own downfall, and the only choice you get to make is if you want to screw the Krogan yet again. Like the confrontation with the Cardinal on Voeld, it’s like the writer deliberately ignored an interesting choice to offer you a shallow one.


Morda


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Too much pouty, not enough shouty.


The idea of a warmongering Krogan leader makes sense. Having said that, I really hate this character. She doesn’t feel like a Krogan to me. She comes of as snarky, sarcastic, and whiny. She has a lot of passive-aggressive lines, which makes no sense to me. Passive aggression is for people who are afraid to be overtly aggressive and confrontational. If anyone should be comfortable with aggression, it’s a Krogan.

On top of this, her vocal performance is really odd. She’s not fearsome, she’s catty. She doesn’t sound like a queen or a war chief. She sounds like an entitled diva. The last female Krogan we met was in Mass Effect 3. She came off as very wise and practical. Morda doesn’t seem have either of those attributes. I never felt like she was particularly cunning.



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Er. You're going to smash your OWN FACE if I don't leave? Did anyone proofread this before sending it off to the voice actor?


Shamus, it’s not like the Krogan are limited to a single personality! What’s wrong with mixing things up a bit?

I can believe that occasionally a Krogan might act like Morda. What I find hard to swallow is that the other Krogan tolerate her as leader. If these guys are impressed with Morda then they should be begging Drack to take over. He’s smarter, more experienced, stronger, has a more impressive list of accomplishments, and has a more Krogan style of leadership. The writer doesn’t give us anything to explain why she’s in charge or why anyone is following her.

More importantly, in a story where all the aliens seem to be off-brand and out-of-character, Morda seems less like the writer is mixing things up and more like the writer didn’t have a handle on the setting they were working with.

Morda is a foil for the player and the most important character on Elaaden, so she really ought to be more impressive. We should find her imposing, not annoying.

Drive Core


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Ryder, why are you upset about a Remnant spaceship? Aren't you supposed to be an explorer?


Out in the desert, there’s a crashed remnant spaceship. Morda wants the drive core. On one hand, she says she wants it to power her colony[1]. On the other hand, it could easily be turned into a weapon of mass destruction.

Ryder goes out to retrieve the drive core, only to find Strux has already obtained it and hidden it away. You recover it without his knowledge and then go to meet with both Strux and Morda.

Strux blames the theft on Ryder. He accuses Ryder of stealing the drive core, announcing that his clan will “recover” it. He’s hoping this move will rally everyone behind him so he can depose Morda. But then you announce that you have it, and this turns the conversation in your favor?



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Part of game development is knowing how to use the tools you have. If your cutscene engine doesn't allow you to frame and choreograph a fistfight, then DON'T HAVE A FISTFIGHT. Have Strux shot from off screen, and then cut to Morda holding a gun and sell it with a musical cue. Stylized minimalism is better than bad execution.


He accused you of stealing it, and to clear your name you announce that you… have it? What?! Strux does sort of incriminate himself at the end, but this scene doesn’t make sense as written. He accuses you of stealing the drive core, and is then outed as a liar when it turns out that he’s telling the truth. From Morda’s point of view, nothing is said that should exonerate you. It’s your word against Strux, and she’s got a huge prejudice against everyone from the Initiative. Ryder only wins here due to writer fiat.

Anyway, Morda and Strux have the most hilariously awkward fistfight since that time Kirk karate-chopped the Gorn in 1967. Morda wins, and Strux runs off.

In the end you can either choose to give Morda the drive core, or you can keep it. She promises war if you choose the latter. This isn’t a bad choice on paper, but by this point in the game I didn’t have any trust in the storyteller and I didn’t feel like I had enough information to make an informed choice. The drive core itself is a random macguffin and you have no way of knowing what it can do, how badly the Krogan need its power, or how hard it would be to turn into a weapon. You don’t know the details or timeline of the Nexus rebellions. Morda’s personality is so strange that I couldn’t get a feel for how seriously I was supposed to take her saber-rattling. Instead of trying to make this decision using my knowledge of the world, I found myself thinking, “I wonder what the writer plans to do with this.” Everything is so vague you could easily justify any outcome.

Crafting System


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Here is the research station, where your scanning of alien consoles gives you research points to build a better helmet.


I realize this game was unpolished and barely came together at the last minute. So it’s not a big surprise that the crafting system ended up just as dodgy as everything else. Still, they picked the least interesting way to break it.

When you’ve got a pure power-building system like this in your game, there are two different ways it can be broken:

1) Unbalanced. You can use the system to gain absurd levels of power that trivialize the game. Essentially, the system gives you too much power for too little cost.
2) Pointless. The system doesn’t give out enough power to make it worth the player’s time.

A balanced system is always best, but if you can’t have that then I am a big believer that you should err on the side of unbalanced rather than pointless. Bob Case made a similar complaint in his video on the new wave of retro isometric RPGs. It’s possible to make a gameplay system so perfectly balanced that there aren’t any meaningful choices for the user to make or any interesting strategies for them to discover or explore. All those numbers become meaningless and the whole thing ends up being a really complicated means of making a simple aesthetic choice: Do I like shooting guys with large guns or small guns?

In Mass Effect Andromeda, you gather up research points by scanning technology in the gameworld. Then you use those points to purchase different branches of upgrades. Then you drive around the open world and lay down mining pods to harvest minerals for you. Then you go back to your spaceship and use the minerals to build the items you’ve unlocked through research. It’s an involved process and turns into a lot of menu busywork.



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Everything is fine.


The thing is, the game strictly limits how much power you’re allowed to get with these systems. You need to harvest those minerals, but there are a couple of premium minerals that are tightly controlled, so you aren’t going to be able to craft many good items. For example, a gun might require copper, Omni-Gel, Copper, Nickel, and Element Zero. By the end of the game you’ll be drowning in the first three, but that last one is really hard to come by. Element Zero is the the only “real” resource here, and that’s the one that will limit your ability to craft items[2].

Just to make sure that you don’t do anything clever like put all of your eezo into one really good weapon, the game also puts a level cap on things. I can’t unlock tier 2 shotguns until I’m level 10, or tier 3 until I’m level 20, etc[3]. This means there’s a hard limit on how strong you can make your weapons at any given time.



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I'll admit I thought the cryo gauntlet was kind of cool (halfhearted pun intended) and remained useful long into the game, but in all the dozens of items a crafted, that was the only one I found noticeably useful.


You find plenty of weapons and armor. You get them from containers, you get them from fallen enemies, and you get them from loot crate drops in APEX missions[4]. The game usually provides stuff appropriate for your level. So even if you go out of your way to gather research, collect minerals, and build items for yourself, the best you can hope for is to gain access to a tier of weapons a little before the game starts giving them to you for free. I pushed as hard as I could against the system, and I was never ahead by more than a single tier of weapons.

The difference between the weapon tiers is so slight that it’s just not worth the hassle. The game is tyrannical about controlling your access to power, but in the end the gains are so minor that it’s better to not bother.

I don’t think crafting adds anything to Mass Effect, but if you decide you need to include it for some reason then I’d much prefer it as a tool for making absurd or unbalanced builds for those that love grinding.

Moving On


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It's still uninhabitable, but it's a few degrees cooler so... whatever. Let's just move on. Maybe Morda can use her new drive core to power the largest air conditioner in the universe.


Once again, the player needs to visit three monoliths to unlock the vault, then clear out the vault to fix the climate. Am I allowed to complain that is makes no sense that the vault can lower the overall temperature of the area when nothing changes in terms of incoming sunlight and atmosphere? No? Then I guess I don’t have anything else to say about Elaaden.

Next week we’re off to the jungle. Sort of.
 

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